Thursday, September 23, 2004

Honey, There’s an Alien on the Phone… What Should I Tell Him?

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Sky and Telescope covers a recent conference at Hahvahd regarding the SETI program.

For the non-dorks among you...if there are any...SETI is the nifty-sounding acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a decades-long research program devoted to finding evidence of an alien civilization.  In a nutshell, the plan is to search the skies with ridiculously oversized dishes listening for signals of certain type and strength to conclude they originated from an alien world.  Conversely, an extraterrestrial society may one day be conducting similar experiments, and hear, say, Double Live Gonzo through the ether, and conclude that not only is there “alien” life out there, but it’s gonna kick your ass.

So this conference was held to discuss where the project is, what they’ve found (not much), what they’ve not found (everything else), how they’ll improve the search process, and the like.  One interesting twist was the faction that asks whether alien civilizations have been trying to reach us for centuries, but we are too ignorant to understand the means of communication.  I’m not talking crop circles here- kinda hard to believe that a civilization that can build interstellar conveyances would choose to express itself in corn- but subtle consistent signals that exist in frequencies or energies we’re only beginning to comprehend. 

What none of these people ask though, and which I find extremely unsettling, is what the holy hell we’re supposed to do the morning after we get a telegram from ET.  How about some conferences discussing the repercussions on our country, indeed our world, in that event?  What happens to our livelihoods, our foreign policy, our belief systems, our self perception, the day after Kang and Kodos get a listing in the phonebook?


Posted by on 09/23/04 at 06:14 PM
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